Undocumented immigrants in the USA will need to pay back taxes under the new comprehensive immigration reform plan. There’s something that stinks about this. It’s simple. Why aren’t the employers who hired undocumented immigrants under the table going to be compelled to pay a fine and pay back taxes if undocumented workers are going to be forced to? At the very least, these employers should be forced to pay back the social security taxes they didn’t pay in the first place. This is a double standard that probably violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. Of course, there’s a reason for the double standard.

Many people in high places have likely hired the undocumented as maids, janitors, kitchen help, gardeners, etc…. Because some are members of the 1 percent, the government will not go after them. On the other hand, there’s billions to be had bilking undocumented immigrants.

Credit card companies, banks and Wall Street are the suspects in question. You know those folks; Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank, and the usual Wall Street crime family, the same criminals that tanked the economy and committed such crimes as fraud and money laundering, and not a single person was charged with a crime because they’re so politically powerful. But why are these folks dictating many of the terms of comprehensive immigration reform? What’s the link? Money, and lots of it. Here’s how and why Wall Street’s scam will work.

According to Pew Hispanic Research, up to 90 percent of all undocumented workers earn their living under the table, which means they haven’t paid federal and state income taxes, as well as social security taxes. The government says there are 11-12 million undocumented immigrants in the US. However, the 2010 US Census claimed there were 13 million undocumented Hispanics in the US. Assuming that Hispanics make up roughly 60 percent of the undocumented, the total number could be 24 to 26 million people. So let’s say that there are 11-26 million undocumented immigrants. A high percentage work for a living. Most of these folks have worked under the table for multiple years and even decades. That means some of these people owe tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes. Millions of wage earners multiplied by thousands and tens of thousands dollars in back taxes is a ton of money.

How are these folks going to get the money to pay back taxes since most don’t earn very much? They’re going to need to apply for credit, unless the government plans to carry their load, which is unlikely. So these folks will need to use credit cards or home equity loans. Interest rates will likely be high.

The credit card lenders, such as Citibank, will reap tons of interest and late fees. On top of that, they’ll bundle the loans and sell them to Wall Street investment banks, such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. Those folks will issue bonds backed by the credit card balances and payments. They’ll turn around and sell the bonds to rich investors. There’s billions of dollars to be scammed through all of these transactions. The newly indebted, but now, documented will make their payments and pay their late fees with much of the proceeds going to the investors, as well as to those who service the loans–members of the 1 percent.

In other words, comprehensive immigration reform is simply another way to redistribute income from the 99 percent to the 1 percent. The victims are the undocumented, who, admittedly, put themselves into this position of indebted servitude to Wall Street for decades to come by illegally migrating to the US. But that doesn’t mean they should be used as financial cannon fodder for the rich in their war against the middle class.

Wall Street is also why a Dream Act doesn’t seem to part of the package. The Dream Act is a concept that undocumented immigrants who were smuggled into the US as children by their parents shouldn’t be made to pay for the violations of US law done by their parents. Instead, they should immediately be given a path toward citizenship. Who can argue with that? Not me. But Wall Street and other credit card companies can because there’s no profit in immediate amnesty for these kids. And that’s the sorry state of the worst congress and worst white house that money can buy. The political philosophy is simple enough. Doing the right thing isn’t the right thing to do if it’s not profitable to Wall Street, which is the main conduit through which income is redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent.

One more point needs to be made. If undocumented persons have worked in the US for years, many might have had several employers, and in different states. Some of these employers might be out of business. If they worked under the table, how is the government going to determine who owes what in back taxes? The answer seems to be obvious. The government isn’t going to make that determination. Wall Street will and it likely will be part of the package. That suggests the back tax issue is going to onerous for the undocumented. That’s part of Part 3 of this series.

The Rigged Game: Corporate America and A People Betrayed

The Rigged Game: Corporate America and a People Betrayed

Wall Street is up to no good, and has been since 1980, when it took over the Republican Party, and then the Democratic Party in 1994. Income has been massively redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent via legislative scam after scam, from tax cuts for the rich to international income redistribution schemes falsely labeled as trade agreements. In The Rigged Game, John Hively exposes how this has all come about starting with a revolutionary, but simple reality, all recessions begin in the financial markets.